Insight
With brand volumes, ‘Refreshing’ equity and ‘Brand Love’ scores eroding, MediaCom needed an idea that would generate hype, excitement, and market disruption while still being relevant and relatable.
Youths are energised by trendy, new, fun and exciting things that they consider to be ‘cool’ – shareable fresh ideas and experiences are their most important social currency, making it increasingly easy for them to communicate within various social groups.
The challenge was to find a way to connect a 127 year-old brand with the ultra-modern youths.
With Coca-Cola being an iconic brand and youths being exposed to many campaigns over the years, something unconventional and highly notable needed to be done in order to make it fun and exciting for them. The best way to turn their attention to Coca-Cola being new, fun and energizing was to shake things up with changes on a core owned Coca-Cola asset that they had been used to seeing over the years and whose design they had taken for granted – The Coke cans.
Strategy
The idea was to develop limited edition cans that embodied the spirit and lingo of today’s tech-savvy youths and to give them a way to easily share them socially with their friends. MediaCom created the Malaysian-English ‘Manglish Cans.’
The iconic Coca-Cola logo on the cans was replaced with seven collectible hashtag designs sporting common ‘Malaysian English’ youth lingo. They were divided into words that cued Coca-Cola intrinsics such as #syoknya and #bestgiler and trendy expressions that are spoken daily such as #beb, #fuyoh and #terrernya.
The agency turned this edition into a #sharemycokelah movement. Youths could snap and share their experiences and interactions with these cans. #sharemycokelah became the hub for conversations around and about the campaign, encouraging more peole to participate by purchasing their very own hashtag cans.
Execution
To engage the youths, #sharemycokelah needed to be social at heart to drive both interaction and conversation. Mass media TV, press, online and on-ground events steered the target audience to take pictures with the cans, hashtaging the name on the can including #sharemycokelah, and be featured in Coca-Cola’s global Facebook page and digital screens nationwide.
The hashtag cans were featured in the TVC and in the number 1 newspaper Harian Metro, creatively placed in a newly created space just below its masthead for maximum disruption. Different cans were featured weekly to play up the collectability factor and drive more conversations. Through Harian Metro GenY activation, MediaCom brought the entire collectible set to six major universities nationwide to excite youths. They took pictures with the cans and shared them with their friends on various social networking sites. Pre-event articles and celebrities who were present at on-ground level helped to further push driving extra hype and participation.
The cans were also used as Facebook ‘Like Ads’ to amplify awareness online and trigger participation. All the user-generated content was featured on Coca-Cola’s global Facebook page and later turned into commercials that were projected on large outdoor digital screens in eight locations across the nation. Consumers were able to catch themselves on the big outdoor digital screens, rewarding MediaCom's engaged youths with once-in-a-lifetime exposure.
Results
The cans generated massive hype and conversations on social media, resulting in 9,000+ user-generated content and almost 500,000 ‘likes’ on those posts.
TVC reached to 3.3million viewers. The partnership with Harian Metro on-paper and GenY on-ground accumulated 10X ROI, and reached an additional 130,000 university students that generated 1,000+ photo submissions.
The activation was covered by the mass media, earning RM3.9million in productivity value. Most importantly, all brand measures saw improvement vs. last year's figures.
Brand Measures Nov12,3MMT Nov13,3MMT Improvement
Brand Awareness Spontaneous 71% 92% 21%
Ad Awareness Spontaneous 62% 82% 20%
Is an uplifting drink 34% 40% 6%
Is very refreshing 50% 56% 6%
Is great tasting 33% 49% 16%
Is a brand I love 46% 59% 13%
Table 1: Coca-Cola Brand Measures
Source: Database - Malaysia B³ (Rolled 3MMT)